Teaching children with autism to respond to and initiate bids for joint attention

A multiple baseline design across 3 children with autism was used to assess the effects of prompting and social reinforcement to teach participants to respond to an adult’s bid for joint attention and to initiate bids for joint attention. Participants were taught to respond to an adult’s bid for joint attention by looking in the direction of an object at which the adult pointed, by making a comment about the object, and by looking back at the adult. Additional training and reinforcement were needed to teach the participants to initiate bids for joint attention. Findings are discussed in terms of the social relevance of teaching children with autism to respond to and initiate bids for joint attention. DESCRIPTORS: autism, joint attention, social skills, teaching language _______________________________________________________________________________ Joint attention is recognized as one of the earliest forms of communication in young children and involves the coordinated attention between a social partner and an object or event in the environment (Bruner, 1975; Mundy, Sigman, & Kasari, 1994). Researchers have distinguished two forms of joint attention: (a) responses to another person’s bid for joint attention and (b) initiations for joint attentio